MicroTar: predicting microRNA targets from RNA duplexes

Background: The accurate prediction of a comprehensive set of messenger RNAs (targets) regulated by animal microRNAs (miRNAs) remains an open problem. In particular, the prediction of targets that do not possess evolutionarily conserved complementarity to their miRNA regulators is not adequately addressed by current tools. Results: We have developed MicroTar, an animal miRNA target prediction tool based on miRNAtarget complementarity and thermodynamic data. The algorithm uses predicted free energies of unbound mRNA and putative mRNA-miRNA heterodimers, implicitly addressing the accessibility of the mRNA 3' untranslated region. MicroTar does not rely on evolutionary conservation to discern functional targets, and is able to predict both conserved and non-conserved targets. MicroTar source code and predictions are accessible at http://tiger.dbs.nus.edu.sg/microtar/, where both serial and parallel versions of the program can be downloaded under an open-source licence. Conclusion: Mi...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Rahul Thadani, Martti T. Tammi
• Keywords: BMCBI 2006, Messenger Rnas, MiRNA Target Prediction, Predictions